


Screaming the Name (of a Foreigner's God)

by livbartlet



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, R plus L equals J
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-06
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-21 20:56:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7404244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livbartlet/pseuds/livbartlet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><br/><br/>here are the players<br/>and this is the game<br/>the pawn gets crowned<br/>and it is the unseen hand that reaps the rewards<br/>a knight dances around a queen<br/>and it is not a romance, it is a battle<br/> </p>
<p>Post Season 6. My selfish attempt to tell the tale of what happens next in Westeros, to put characters in their rightful places with their rightful people. I don't know how long it will get, or who all will make appearances - characters, tags, and relationships all subject to changes and additions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

_ Screaming the Name (of a Foreigner’s God) _

  
  
  


_ She moved with shameless wonder _

_ The perfect creature rarely seen _

_ Since some liar brought the thunder _

_ When the land was godless and free _

_ — Hozier, a northern bard _

  
  
  


_ here are the players _

_ and this is the game _

_ the pawn gets crowned _

_ and it is the unseen hand that reaps the rewards _

_ a knight dances around a queen _

_ and it is not a romance, it is a battle _

_ —  origin unknown, oft attributed to Tyrion Lannister, The Imp, Hand of the Dragon Queen _

  
  
  
  
  
  


CHAPTER 1

 

_ something so magic about you _

  
  
  


Faster than ravens.

_ As swift as dragon wings. _

The news of Daenerys Stormborn’s conquest of King’s Landing moves on the wind — north and south, east and west.

Cersei, the Mad Queen, is in the dungeons. And a Targaryen holds the Iron Throne once more.

To the smallfolk who have known war and its privations for years now, it makes little difference. Life and death continue as they did. Perhaps this Dragon Queen will put an end to nameless, bannerless marauding raiders or perhaps not. She is just another name on a throne none of them have ever seen. Lords and ladies and kings and queens play their games, but the suffering has always been the same. What does it matter whose name it is?

  
  
  
  


“They do not love me.” Dany looks out through the high windows of the Red Keep to the chaos of the city below. Murder and thievery and rape, all symptoms of fear. She would burn them all, but — 

“These things take time, my Queen,” Tyrion answers at her side. “Westeros has been at war for too long to fall easily into peace.”

“Then how do I fix it? I will not have my kingdom tearing itself apart.” Not entirely her kingdom, yet, though. Taking the capital is only the beginning. She has Dorne and the Reach and now the Crownlands. The Lannisters still fight to hold the Westerlands, and the Stormlands are in chaos. Everything north, though — she sighs. Taking a city is not taking a kingdom. 

Tyrion drains his glass of wine. “I have an idea, but it is possible you will not like it.”

“I always value your council, my Hand.”

Missandei and Grey Worm raise sceptical eyebrows, for they still do not fully trust the Imp. Dany trusts him. More for that when the time had come to dispatch with his sister, he had forsaken revenge and left judgement to his Queen and to the gods.

The Gods.

Dany does not know or recognize these Seven gods, or even the Old Gods, with their bloody trees. She knows fire and horses and shadows on tent walls, and her dragons.

She does not trust religion or its practitioners, yet she is bound by a tradition of Targaryen rulers and their adherence to the Faith of the Seven. The Sept of Baelor, for instance, she will rebuild. Though it does not mean she will worship there.  _ Symbols _ are important.

“And what is your idea?” Dany returns to the problem at hand. Conquerors are rarely loved, as she had found in Meereen. The Seven Kingdoms were supposed to be different, though. Ah, she had foolishly held to her brother’s ravings about a longing for Targaryen rule.

“The majority of the South is behind you, my Queen. And that is well and good. But the North is as great as the other kingdoms combined. It is the North you must woo.”

“The north is full of savages, is it not?” She is not one to throw aspersions, Great Khaleesi of the Dothraki Hordes, but Westeros is startling in its strangeness at times. It does not feel like home, like it ought. She feels more east than west, now that she is here.

“Not all. There are many cultured, reasonable people in the North. My wife among them.” Tyrion gives a sly smile over his cup— one of his favorite affectations. He drinks and he knows things.

“Your wife?” Dany raises a cool eyebrow.

“It’s a long story. I thought she was dead. But a red priestess has told me otherwise. Convincingly, too.”

  
  
  
  


_ King in the North _ . Drunken echoes mock him as sets to the actual work of  ruling. He is Jon Snow, accepted as Stark, and more beset with enemies than even his lord father could have found himself in the viper’s nest of King’s Landing. He does not fancy his chances any better than a public beheading, in the end. Southron enemies had been predictable until now. He had been prepared for the Lannisters, for the Mad Queen Cersei, with Sansa’s insights into her cunning. But now this new threat.

A Dragon Queen. Perched for now in King’s Landing, but for how long?

Infighting and disagreements among the Northern lords — concerning, but easier to confront head on as young Lyanna Mormont continues to prove herself an important voice in rallying and wrangling the fractured northern houses.

The Night King

The true threat. The great war to come. The battle for which he finds himself the least prepared, though he has had more experience against the magicks of beyond the wall than any one of his advisors. Davos pretends to understand. Tormund knows. Neither has a solution to the oncoming onslaught of winter and death. To the total destruction of men.

Jon had looked into those ice blue eyes and known nothing would satisfy that hunger other than complete desolation.

He scratches at parchment, pretending at usefulness, wishing for Sam’s council, while darkness falls and the fire in hearth gutters before tending from a servant.

“Even the King needs to sleep,”  Sansa startles him from the entry.

“Did father ever sleep?” Jon rubs his forehead, though there has been no relief against this headache since the night they crowned him.

“When mother insisted, yes, he did,” she pauses and picks up a random scroll from his desk. Her grey dress looks new, finely embroidered as only Sansa’s delicate hands could accomplish. Arya had always complained about Sansa’s superior needlework, superior ladylike everything. Jon had commiserated, comforted — Sansa was meaner to the bastard of Winterfell than to her little sister. But now Sansa was his confidante, his shelter in the weather of politics. She’d grown. Not just in age. There was a watchful hardness to her now, whatever had allowed her to survive King’s Landing and then Baelish and then the Boltons.

Sansa had been thrown to the dogs, he had been stabbed in the back. Both betrayed as seemed the fate of Starks too much since father’s death. But they survived. Together, they would triumph. “The words are all blurry, anyhow. I’ll call it a night.”

“Good night, Your Grace.”

“Ah, just call me Jon. I’m not for fancy titles, and we’re family.”

“Good night, Jon.” Sansa stays in the solar, studying the fire as he leaves. Jon wonders if she ever sleeps, even as uneasy darkness claims him and he struggles against dreams of emptiness and cold and death. A commander must be clear-headed — rested — though Jon rarely rests these days.

  
  
  
  


Sleep is too fraught with pain and memory-dreams. Sometimes, in the quietest hours of the night, in her restored girlhood room, Sansa finds some rest. But it’s a fleeting thing. It feels false, sleeping there as she once did when she was so young and naive. The broken but rebuilding Lady Stark is more likely to find respite in action, or odd moments like this one, staring through flames and mapping out possible solutions to Jon’s worries, to the threats she still faces.

Dragons.

At the first word of Cersei’s defeat, Sansa had convinced Littlefinger to ride to the capital and keep an eye and an ear to their interests. She does not trust him  — he is as likely to sell intelligence to Varys and this Daenerys Stormborn as he is to send back truth to her attached to a raven. But she had played the sweet Sansa for him, let him read between the lines what he wanted to see — an opportunity for that pretty picture. A picture that would never be. Sansa’s pretty pictures are here, at home, in Winterfell.

And there was always the chance that Littlefinger would be killed in King’s Landing — his ambitions too great, this Dragon Queen ruthless by all accounts. If Baelish were to burn, Sansa would not weep.

Sansa is nodding off to the flames when a guard rushes in. The clank of mail beneath leather armor rattles her awake and completely alert. “What is it?”

“My Lady, at the gate. There’s a boy — he says — he says he is your brother.”

Sansa rushes ahead of the guard, down the stairs from the solar. “And you’ve left him at the gate?” Bran, Bran, could it be Bran?

“None of us knows him, my Lady. Ser Davos said you would know. There is a girl with him, she will not give up her weapons.”

“And the boy?”

“Appears crippled, my Lady.”

“Then open the gate and let him in, you fool!” Sansa races across the courtyard as the guards shout and the gate opens. A dirty, ragged pair appear in the light of the moon and the snow — covered in rough furs, underfed like wildlings. Like Rickon had been. The boy, on a sled of some sort, turns his head at Sansa’s approach and she nearly falls to her knees.

“Bran!”

“Sansa,” he smiles. So grown up now, she sees, up close. His useless legs grown long, and his eyes — so deep, none of the boy he’d been is left in his eyes.

Much like herself, she imagines. What has happened to us all, that we are all so dark now?

“I’m Meera Reed,” the girl says, her voice heavy with fatigue.

“You will have rooms, and food and a good fire. Your old room is ready, Bran. I have not been able to give away the family rooms. How are you here?” Sansa grips the hand Bran stretches out to her.

“I will tell you. But Jon needs to hear as well. I have news for him.”

“He will be so happy to see you.” Sansa blinks back tears. She does not cry anymore. Not even for joy.

A guard carries Bran up to his room, and the Reed girl watches him carefully. So many questions circle around in Sansa’s head. But rest first. And a bath.

What other gifts does the future hold? The past six years, so stingy and cruel, are truly over. There are three Starks in Winterfell. And nothing can tear them apart anymore, not if Sansa has a say.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

CHAPTER 2

 

_ if the heavens ever did speak _

  
  
  


The screaming, arakh-wielding cavalry charges, and Jaime thinks again — not the first time today or this week or this month— that he is a poor battlefield knight. Walder Frey, damn him, had spoken the truth of it — Jaime had got himself captured the last time he’d gone to war. He was a tournament knight, or had been. The best there was. But now he is ineffectual in a real battle, in the mud and the muck. Even his father was a better general. His golden hand rests heavy against the saddle, his distance from the field rests heavy against his honor.

Honor.  _ Pfft _ , he spits.

He gave that up long ago, did he not? The past two years are fading, all his effort to reclaim something he never owned, all come to naught. Cersei had seen to that, and he let her. He had thought to console her, or claim some consolation for himself. But the crown was all the consolation Cersei wanted.

His golden sister, his heart, she’d turned cold as the throne she claimed. Bitter kisses with no relief or hope of pleasure. Cersei had left him behind.

So he’d returned to their army. Just in time to miss the battle of King’s Landing — brief, by all accounts — more a capitulation. What did Cersei or any army of Westeros have to withstand dragons?

Nothing.

Now the Dragon Queen’s foreign armies harry the Lannister forces further west every day. Soon they will be caught with their backs to the sea, and a Greyjoy fleet to greet them.

The Lannisters are losing the war. Jaime has already lost.

It seems as good a reason as any to charge in to the fray. Perhaps he will be killed and see his children once again. Yes, a good reason for a distant commander to wade in. Self pity and loathing.

He kicks his horse into action, into the welcoming chaos. Left-handed, he manages to make some cuts with his sword. Not as ineffectual as he feared. Then a filthy foreign screamer knocks him off his horse and Jaime’s world goes black.

  
  
  
  


“Drunk on prophecies and comets,” Varys remarks smoothly, only his tightly folded hands betraying any tension underneath the cloth of his stylized and overly long sleeves. Dany has never seen a man so eager to hide his hands. Perhaps because he prefers to let everyone think his mind does all the work.

“You cast fearful aspersions, my friend. I have seen The Wall, remember? And I felt it there — the something beyond, something frightening. More than just cold.” Tyrion shivers for effect. “Have any of you seen The Wall? It is a marvel of engineering. And magic. Or so I read once.”

The debate over the news — the warning — of a Night King and his Army of the Dead making their way south, continues in this vein. Tyrion and Varys in their verbal thrust and parry. Grey Worm sulks because his Queen keeps him from battle. Missandei observes and absorbs. Missandei believes the red priestess, Dany thinks.

The ranks of her advisors seem too thin. She wishes for Ser Barristan. Or Daario. Or even Jorah. Some extra perspective to help her unravel this new problem. She needs someone who knows Westeros. More than Tyrion alone. The Red Keep needs a maester. When will the Citadel send her a Grand Maester for her council?  _ When the Citadel deems you are securely on your throne. _

Madness in the red priestess’s eyes — yes. But truth, as well. Dany cannot disregard the solemnity of such a warning. Warnings unheeded had killed her Khal and their son.

“I will see The Wall,” she announces.

“Your Grace, it is winter. Roads that far north are impassable. And you cannot leave King’s Landing, the countryside is too dangerous.”

“Then I will fly. What is some cold to my Drogon?”

Tyrion sighs and closes his eyes for a moment. “And the North, with their King, what will they think when they see you and your dragon? Invasion. And the way to the win the North is diplomacy. No, you cannot.”

“I  _ cannot _ ?”

“It would be unwise.”

“I agree,” Varys says. “We have other, more pressing matters at hand.”

“Yes, diplomacy with the North,” Missandei nods. “They will look to the Iron Islands and expect the same.”

“They have not asked, though. They declared. Before Her Grace came to power, certainly. And wanting to be free of Lannister rule can be forgiven,” Varys nods slightly in Tyrion’s direction — no offense intended, friend — “But they have done nothing to acknowledge the rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, now that she is here.”

“What was this idea of yours, my Hand?”

“Ah. Yes. A King in the North. A Queen in the South. The answer seems obvious.”

“I should propose marriage — a political alliance — to a man I have not even met? Whose people I do not know? Why not conquer the North with my armies instead?”

“Her Grace is correct. We do not know the will of this Jon Snow. Is he like his father, correct and honorable to a fault? Or more as the brothers in black, a criminal, opportunistic?”

“Have your little birds not sung the truth of Jon Snow yet?”

Varys responds with a dark look and a redirect. “Littlefinger has returned to King’s Landing. Sent by your lady wife, I believe.”

“Littlefinger is a problem.” Tyrion shakes his head. “But one I’m sure you can handle, old friend.”

“Yes, Littlefinger is predictable. I fear the Northerners are not, except for their wish for independence.”

“Perhaps it is time your wife was returned to you, Lord Tyrion,” Dany suggests.

Tyrion startles. “My wife in name only.”

“Is that not exactly what you have suggested for me? Diplomacy requires dialogue and dialogue requires a presence in the same room, does it not? I wish to see your wife and her brother. Have a raven sent. The Queen of the Seven Kingdoms requires their attendance at her coronation.”

“Your Grace, we have not planned a coronation yet,” Missandei objects.

“Then it is time we did.” Dany sweeps up from her chair at the head of the table. “First though, there will trials and executions.” Starting with Cersei. A new queen cannot take the throne until the old one is dead.

  
  
  
  


She is already on her way south when she comes across the conquering army of horse lords and their trail of prisoners. She becomes a camp follower — just useful and old enough to avoid a knife in her back or an unwelcome guest in her place by the fire at night while she dreams of hunting through woods by a river, racing under a moon, thirsting for blood.

The Kingslayer walks behind one of the lead horses, an important prisoner. He is not her objective. But he will lead to others who are.

  
  
  



	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

 

_ Something so magic about you _

  
  
  
  


“It’s not true.” Jon’s mouth sets in a stubborn line. “It can’t be true.”

“I saw it happen, Jon. She made him promise never to tell anyone, and he never did.” Bran speaks quietly from his bed, sitting up, while the Reed girl stands guard.

Sansa puts a staying hand on Jon’s arm. Now is not the time for stubbornness to become anger. She must think. Rhaegar and Lyanna…a secret that would have gone to the grave with father…“Littlefinger knows, I’m sure of it.”

“How could he?” Jon dismisses. Oh, these Northern men, so quick to disregard the men of the South who play games of intrigue too well. Father died for the mistake — she cannot let Jon do the same.

“The way he spoke of Aunt Lyanna sometimes, of Robert’s going to war for her, something in his voice. I am certain that he knows.” She has severely miscalculated, she realizes. Sending Littlefinger away was a mistake, a selfish move, not forward-thinking enough. “And now he will be in King’s Landing, and he will find a way to tell the Dragon Queen.”

“What of it?” Jon stands up to pace. “I’m still a Stark, as much as I ever was — still a Snow, then — I don’t care about the Targaryens.”

“You have to care! Do you think our bannermen will not care if they find out? And these kinds of secrets, once they are known, they get out, people find them out. Always. No matter how careful we are.” How could Jon not see this?

“If I am not father’s son, then I cannot rule. It should be you, Bran.” Jon’s mouth is still stubborn. Still so honorable and dense.

Bran shakes his head. “No. I am the three-eyed raven, and a cripple. I cannot be king of anything, Jon.”

Sansa waits — impatience crawls under her skin, sudden and unwelcome — for the next, the correct conclusion. It should be her. She was quiet when the bannerman proclaimed Jon King in the North, ignoring the trueborn Stark right in front of them, for Jon had not asked for it, and such a swell of swords and devotion cannot be fought in the moment. But now —  _ now _ — Winterfell is her right and the North will have to acknowledge it. Bran stares at her and his eyes feel penetrating, too all-knowing. Is she wrong to want her birthright? Even though it has been granted to her through too much death and she does not rejoice in any of those deaths, not like Cersei would?

“There will be a Queen in the North, then.” Jon bites it out, begrudgingly, then stalks out of the room.

Sansa stares at the departing back of his head and his black cloak and a tide of anger threatens to choke her. “What else have you seen?” Sansa turns it on Bran. “What other frightful secrets are going to tear us apart before we’re all dead?”

“Careful,” the Reed girl warns, taking a step forward.

“It’s alright, Meera,” Bran says. “There is a raven come, from King’s Landing.” Bran closes his eyes and Sansa takes it for the dismissal it is.

Damn brothers — no, Jon is her cousin now — damn boys and men and their stupidity and ignorance and selfishness. Knights and kings and their swords and their thrones and their armies and rivers of blood, all to prove superiority over the others, as if killing is the chief talent a ruler should own. When had that ever gone well for anyone? She might despise Littlefinger, but he had shown her another way — the way of words, politics, knowing the desires your enemies. Truly useful talents. And she should have the chance to make them work for the North.

Davos meets her halfway to the rookery, a scroll in his hand. “A raven just arrived, my lady. From King’s Landing. Addressed to your brother.”

“I will take it to him, ser,” Sansa offers, and Davos puts the scroll in her hand. She examines the seal as he departs — not a Targaryen sigil, something more frightening.

She finds Jon in the godswood. She wonder if he still prays, or if, like herself, he comes here only for the quiet. “Sansa.” He breathes her name as an apology, but she will hear him say that he is wrong, not imply it with a regretful turn of his mouth and beseeching eyes.

“You do not think I should rule, or worse, that I am incapable.” She lifts her chin at him.

“That’s not it at all, Sansa. I know you can. But I know what happens to northern kings. And I would have you live.” He grasps her shoulders and presses a kiss to her forehead. A familiar gesture, by now. Brotherly — except, he is not, anymore, is he.

Sansa sighs. “So you thought to spare me death by accepting a crown? Jon, you are an idiot. We are rebels again, raising a King in the North. All our heads are at risk.” She smiles at him, then steps back. “And the Targaryens are no better than the Lannisters.” She holds up the sealed letter.

“What’s this?” Jon turns it over to examine the wax. “The seal of the Hand?”

“Tyrion. It’s a reminder. Whatever is in the letter, that seal is half the message.”

Jon breaks the wax and reads the letter quickly. Then again, more slowly. She cannot read his expression, though she can guess at the words. It will be a power play, all in all. “We are summoned to King’s Landing for the coronation of the new queen of the Seven Kingdoms, who is eager to meet her Warden of the North and his sister, the Lady Stark. Signed Tyrion Lannister, Hand of the  Queen.”

“That is all?” So subtle, then.

“We cannot leave the North, Sansa. We’ve barely scraped the bannermen together again. And the threats from the beyond the Wall… We cannot.”

“It’s a royal summons, we can’t ignore it, or we will be next to know dragon fire melting a castle. And — I cannot rule the North if I am still married to a Lannister.”

“Surely he cannot mean to claim you as his wife in truth? You told me it was in name only, a cruel joke on both of you.”

“Perhaps he does not. But what of his queen? If her hand is married to a Stark, she’s halfway to ruling us already. More, if she finds out the truth of who you are.”

“Can we not speak of it, please?” Jon rubs a hand over his face. “I’m not — I don’t feel — I’m still me!”

“Of course you are. I know that. But nobody else who holds this knowledge will see that. They will see what you have not yet — that Daenerys is not the last dragon. You are a threat. To her, and to the North.”

“We’ve only come home,” Jon pleads. “Only begun rebuilding. Can we not have any peace?”

“I’m afraid not.” South once more. Her heart thumps too heavily in her chest at the idea. Not fear, exactly — a mixture of emotions — anticipation, maybe. They will acquiesce to this summons, and they will play the politics of King’s Landing and emerge with their lives. And freedom for the North.

  
  
  
  


For months after his escape from the red priestess, he looks over his shoulder constantly. He barely sleeps, he throws himself into work, into his craft. He hides in plain sight, working a forge in the capital, the only place he could think of come to. He grows taller, stronger, and gains a quiet reputation for quality workmanship. He settles in, finds comfort and ease. He becomes his own man, as much as anyone from Flea Bottom can. 

Three years have passed now, and nobody cares about Baratheon bastards anymore. Not even Queen Cersei, whose public trial he has decided he will attend, so that he may finally see the face of the woman who first ordered his death.

 


End file.
